Brittanee Drexel
Seventeen-year-old Brittanee was last seen on April 25, 2009 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina by her friends at the Bar Harbor Hotel at 8:00 pm. She was out of town for spring break with her friends and boyfriend. Brittanee walked more than a mile to the Blue Water Resort on Ocean Boulevard, where her other friends were staying. Surveillance cameras at the resort show her going into the resort and then leaving sometime after 8:30 p.m. At 9:15 p.m., she sent a text message to one of her friends saying she was going to see a friend who was staying at another hotel and she has never been heard from again. Brittanee asked her mother for permission to go to Myrtle Beach, but was denied permission; she was allowed to stay at a friend's house, but instead, Brittanee went to Myrtle Beach in spite of what her mother said. Brittanee's mother was unaware of this and thought that her daughter was staying with a friend locally; they spoke several times on the telephone after Brittanee arrived in South Carolina, but Brittanee's mother didn't find out where her daughter really was until she was notified that she had disappeared. Brittanee left all of her clothes behind at her hotel room; her beige purse and pink cell phone disappeared with her. The phone's last signal was near U.S. 17 and the Charleston County line the night Brittanee went missing; since then, its battery has died. In the summer of 2016, investigators announced they believe they know what happened to Brittanee and named a suspect in her case. They believe she was held against her will for four days before being murdered. A witness, Taquan Brown, testified that he'd seen Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor and several other people sexually assaulting Brittanee at a drug dealer's "stash house" in McClellanville, South Carolina (a small town located about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach). Timothy's father, Shaun Taylor, was also present. Police believe Timothy planned to force Brittanee into prostitution, but after her disappearance received widespread publicity, he decided to kill her. At one point, Brittanee tried to escape and ran away from the house, but she was caught, pistol-whipped and taken back inside. Brown says he later heard two gunshots and later saw Brittanee's cloth-wrapped body carried out of the house where it was supposedly dumped in one of the many local alligator pits. Taquan Brown is currently awaiting trial in a 2011 robbery case; he was the getaway driver in the robbery of a restaurant. He had already been convicted of the robbery in state court and sentenced to 18 months of probation, which he completed, but was charged again in federal court. Federal prosecutors don't usually charge people who were already convicted in state court, but they did so in this instance in part because of Timothy's suspected role in Brittanee's disappearance. In July of 2017, he pleaded guilty to the federal charges in exchange for a sentence of ten to twenty years in prison. Timothy Taylor maintains his innocence in Brittanee's case and due to lack of evidence, he has not faced charges in connection with her disappearance. He claims he doesn't even know Brown, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter. Brown's account of Brittanee's murder has not been substantiated by other eyewitnesses, although a second police informant says he heard about what happened from another eyewitness. A search of the house where Brittanee supposedly died turned up nothing and authorities are searching for her remains. As of 2018, her case remains unsolved. Brittanee moved around frequently during her childhood because her father was in the military. Her parents describe her as a very resourceful, strong-minded and independent young woman. Her parents are legally separated and Brittanee lived with her mother, but she saw her father frequently. Brittanee was upset over her parents' pending divorce, but they don't believe she ran away, as this is uncharacteristic of her; they also don't think Brittanee would have left her clothes behind and her boyfriend of three years agrees with this assessment. At the time of her disappearance, Brittanee resided in Rochester, New York where she was a junior at Gates-Chili High School; she was a star player on the school soccer team and was studying cosmetology. She is also very interested in fashion and wearing stylish outfits. Her nickname is Britt. Description Brittanee is described as a Caucasian female of Turkish descent with brown hair with blonde highlights, blue/green eyes, is 5'0 and 103 pounds. Her ears & nose are pierced, and she wears blue-tinted contact lenses. She frequently changes her hairstyle and hair color. She was last seen wearing a white, teal & gray spaghetti-strap top, black shorts and white or silver flip-flops. She also suffers from depression. Category:Missing Children Category:Females Category:Missing by Year Category:2009